Revelation
by HeyiyaIf
Summary: A story about a sort of 'Nomance'. Mostly a dream. Read and see.
1. Prologue: Revelation

_**Inspired by Florence + the Machine's 'No Light, No Light'. May benefit from listening while, before or after reading. Depending on personal taste of course.**_

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><p>The noise in the square is intense. She has been to festivals before but her eardrums don't recall anything like this in Highever. It is mildly intoxicating, like a heavy Nevarran redwine, or (so she imagines) lyrium-spiked water. It rolls through the streets like blood. Denerim is a body in rapture, and for a moment it strikes her as perverse, surrounded as they are by stone ground into powder and the poorer parts of the alienage still swept by incontrollable fires.<br>But perhaps that is the exhilaration of survival. However that sort of hysteria has become foreign to her. A dull edge.  
>Something brushes softly agains her mind. She really ought to remember.<br>But the noise! It drowns out everything. The shouts of praise gives her a headache. The hysterical sobbing nauseates her. She is acutely aware of the absurdity of the spectacle, briefly imagines that Morrigan is watching it all right now from above, shiny mirror in her magpie claw and cackling. She looks down at her hand and sees that it is shaking.

I wish I could remember.  
>It hovers on the edge of her minds ear, like a chain of words. When she dreamt, and the bile green fogs of the archdemon threatened to take over and become all of reality, the words would make it all go quiet. There would be stillness, then, and no sobbing, no screaming. Her own or otherwise.<p>

She needs it now, but it isn't there.

Alistair will be crowned king soon. She made them do it. But she worries that it might not have been enough. The marriage seemed the swiftest route to stability, to keeping everyone sufficiently happy, and Loghain's bloodymindedness have been put to better use. But still. The internal relations of the new royal family will be strained, and the queen has the prospect of having to go to the bed of her dead husbands brother to contend with.  
>Better to make sure Loghain is far away. better to write the First Warden and suggest a transfer to Weisshaupt.<br>And what of the Arl of Redcliffe?  
>He wasnt satisfied. That much she could tell.<p>

And she realises then that she is drowning the noise of the outside with noise of mind, and the former is nothing compared to the latter.  
>What am I doing, she wonders, planning the lives of multitudes, deciding successions while everyone else are offguard, so busy just being happy? I, who despised Arl Howe and saw everything I loved destroyed at his hands.<br>What a grand puppeteer you have become, Imogen Cousland!

Heaviness hits her. She feels tired. _Where __is __the __cake,_ she recalls someone asking dryly, when the ceremonials at the castle were over.  
>Indeed, cake would be good now. A thing of the earth. A simple pleasure.<br>And with that she remembers. not one, but two things at once.

The first: the words of the prayer. She didn't understand them of course, and always forgot to ask what they meant. But she recalls them now, and the strange growl that in her mind is so intertwined with them as to be inseparable.  
>There is much that I do not understand here, he said. No one seem to be content with who they are.<br>She was defensive at the time, so sure she was right and he in the wrong. And he didn't press the matter.  
>It strikes her now, a Landsmeet wiser, how right he were when he said that. Unforgiving, riddlespeaking, but certainly right, in a sense.<br>And yet, contrary to all she was ever told of the zealotry of the follower of the Qun... He never pressed the matter. Not once.

"Imogen Cousland, Hero of Ferelden, accept this as symbol of the undying gratitude of the People..."  
>She thanks absentmindedly, noting that the Queen's speech sounds as smoothly rehearsed as always, as carefully sincere as only practice at a court full of untruths can shape a voice. The prize is a wreath of flowers of some kind, a forced folksyness. It was comissioned, no doubt, with the preferred royal deliverer of such products this same morning. None of those young girls bound it. Certainly, they have been busy enough searching the rubble of their homes for belongings, bodies of lost ones, and the rubble of their voilated chastities for any salvageable fragment of dignity.<br>Many, she considers dispassionately, will have to be put down yet in the days to come, when it turns out that the taint itself has been spewed into their bodies.

And yet, this carefully commissioned still-life.  
>The Hero of Ferelden, the Queen and her King next to her (in that order), and the undyingly grateful people, who apparently choose to symbolise their gratitude with something as ephemeral as a wreath of flowers.<br>As still-lifes go, she judges, it isn't a very impressive one.  
>It is as she scans the sea of cheering, halfmad faces that she realises what she is looking for. It should be so easy to find but she looks and it isn't there. All the faces are white.<br>"...Excuse me..."

Suddenly she's on the brink of panic, jumping off the tribunal that they erected for this whole exercise, and starting off, half running. She notices that Alistair's mouth opens as if to call at her, in surprise or insult – the way their friendship has been going since the Landsmeet, it is probably the latter. He is, however, silenced by one pointed look from his new wife. The Queen doesn't miss a step, as the crowds part to let the Hero of Ferelden pass (the first time that day the title pays off to her advantage). As she leaves the plaza behind, Anora is already launching into a praising of the modesty of the Grey Warden.

The side alleys are thronging. Soldiers cleaning up, huge bonfires of darkspawn corpses encircled by Denerimers, madly cavorting, inbetween consumption of booze in huge gulps. She is wondering where they even got it from, when a group of young men pushes past her, the oldest probably no more than eighteen winters old, chasing each other down the street, all bravado and dreams of the future. The one leading the fray is wearing a ladies' gown, emitting high-pitched whoops as he goes, his comrades mock-chasing his skirts.

The obvious, death-defying play on identity brings a brief smile to her face.

_Women can't be warriors?_

The thought makes her face darken. She picks up speed again.

No, Alistair didn't take it well. She recalls his petulance when she let Loghain live, and the bitter taste of her own disappointment in him. Does it matter to you, she yelled at his back as he went, that killing Ferelden's most seasoned general on the eve of battling the darkspawn might potentially destroy everything Duncan fought to protect? Everything that all Grey Wardens die for?

And as he didn't turn or even slow down, she'd added under her breath:

Who told you that being a Warden was glorious? It certainly can't have been Duncan.

And she'd meant it. Duncan knew better. For all the short time she knew the man, that much was clear.

We are gray, not white. That is why we can go where others cannot. And because we can, we must.

We haven't flown the skies for many ages, and no gryphons remain to carry us above the dirt. Alistair, the Warden king. Anora will not bear any children by you.

But Morrigan may bear a child that will be sibling to the Queen.

Morrigan. For all her lack of social graces, she was always truthful. Even about those motifs she knew might displease others. Morrigan knew who she was... wherever she is now.

_Parshaara. Why do you pester me?_

Why indeed, Morrigan. Why the satire? What were you trying to say?

She looks at the sun, slows down suddenly. Walks aimlessly hither and yon. The streets down here are narrow and labyrinthine. She must be near The Pearl.

"Imogen!"

She whirls around and it's Wynne. Of course it's Wynne, the only one who will call the Teyrna of Highever by her first name as were she a wayward child. What a Senior Enchanter is doing down here is anybody's guess, but then Wynne always had an uncanny ability to _find_ you if she wanted you to be found.

Or maybe it is because she needed to pick the elf assassin up. Zevran. He stands next to her, as happy as you please, and whatever has prompted Wynne to agree with the prospect of most certainly having to put up with his worship of her ample bosom, it must be something important. Something really really important.

And she, Imogen, stands frozen as if overcome by a sudden heaviness. Go, a voice with in her urges. Go! It will be too late. And as her wizened self-appointed counsellor is just about to launch into something clearly very important for which the person of Imogen Cousland, Hero of Ferelden is probably indispensable, she does something she has never done before, and her mother, the old Teyrna of Highever would have scolded her something awful, but there is nothing to do about that now.

She interrupts an elder.

"Wynne...! Yes, sorry I'm interrupting but this is very important. Have you seen..."

And she grows weak again, drawing a deep breath, and continues, "Have you seen the qunari. The Sten. Our Sten."

Wynne looks taken aback, puzzled, Zevran suddenly inquisitive. She takes note of both and plunges onwards:

"It's just that... I think there has been some terrible mistake. One that I need to mend before he goes to tell the arishok about Ferelden."

A terrible mistake.

A terrible, terrible mistake.

Wynne furrows her brow, trying to process this unexpected turn as quickly as possible. Zevran looks back, one eyebrow arched as if to say, what do I know of foreign affairs, you are the Fereldan noble, I am just a knife-ear, remember?

Wynne cocks her head, looking with that dreadful examining expression of hers. Her tone, when she answers, is almost a question in itself.

"I last saw him this morning, at Denerim castle. The ceremony. He was saying his farewells. He said that he had already spoken to you?"

"You studied some qunari culture at the Tower, right?"

"Yes, that's right?" Wynne nods tentatively, the furrows in her brow deepen.

"So... I have a question. Please, it's urgent."

And she asks Wynne about the second thing she recalled while the crowd was shouting. The second word that she never asked about, that for some reason it seemed so very clear that she _shouldn't_ ask. It was for her to understand, or not understand, and no clarification would have been forthcoming, even should she have asked for it.

_You are not as callow as you seem._

A trust severely misplaced, she now fears.

Wynne answers her question with absentminded scholarliness, as always.

Zevran, more perceptive than Wynne (contrary, surely, to what the latter would prefer to believe), widens his eyes as he overhears the answer. And he stretches out his arm and points towards the docks, without a word.

She runs. The Hero of Ferelden, the Teyrna of Highever, the stupid, stupid _imekari _runs, and breath is stuck in her throat, because the sun is already high on the sky.

Along the way she is close to toppling dockside workers with goods, several times. Life is already going on down here, near the sea. Its waves rise and fall, she supposes, and never stopped, never changed, even while the archdemon bellowed out its hatred over Denerim from the tower of Fort Drakon.

And while she runs, the does what she has neglected, or avoided, all that day. Maybe other days, she is not sure, though the more she thinks of it, the more she can't believe how such a great space could be occupied, so near her, without her even realising. Until the space was empty.

He argued. He was the only one, out of all of them, who ever cared enough to question her. She remembers Haven, and the light in his strange eyes when he challenged her. And how she always felt, afterwards, that he'd let her win because for some reason he decided he had to. Just has he challenged her because he had to.

She'd yelled at him several times, and he never responded with anything but that cool, correct demeanor of his. No one could sound as flat as him. It was like he always trusted that his words carried their own weight – he didn't have to do anything except utter them.

She thinks of their Sten who wouldn't say his name. Whether he had any is anyone's guess – she knows so little of his people, for all she knows they might not have any names beyond their functions, though somehow she doubts it.

Then she remembers: he had approved when she told him that Dog was just named Dog. A name she had chosen when she was so small she could probably had sat on his shoulder without him noticing, and as she recalled they had all laughed at it back home, because why hadn't she called it Connor, or Dane, or Shredder, or Valiant.

But he liked Dog. She'd approached him, later, and asked why, and he had said:

'It is who he is. Wild things do not have names'.

And he had gone back to sharpen his blade with the big whetstone he had apparently brought with him all the way from Par Vollen.

This way and that way she turns, stopping to question one who seems to know what is what down here, then taking off again, with even more speed than before.

As she reaches the quayside, she sees a sail. The breeze is carrying the ship swiftly on, it is already far, far out. Too far.

She closes her eyes, squeezes them shut. A small person, the only still point in the hustle and bustle on the winding Denerim quays. A lonely dot in a place where everyone are so in the right, they never reach out; and because of that, never understand a reached out hand when they see it, but only that it is bronze and not white.

She squeezes her eyes shut, and remembers, a hurricane of silences and meanings and soft spoken mentions of tea and incense.

And Wynne's puzzled answer to the question.

_Kadaan? _A very interesting word, dear. Very few of our kind have ever even heard it used, and only when overhearing conversations between qunari. It is generally agreed that it means 'that which is held close to the heart'. Why are you asking?


	2. The Last Man

**Named this time after 'the Last Man' by Clint Mansell, off 'the Fountain' OST.**

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><p><em>"I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?"<em>

_- Chuang Tzu 389 - 286 BC._

The first days aren't too bad. The weather is relatively mild, and while occasionally a few drops make the empty threat of rain showers, all in all what the clouds mostly do is keep him sheltered from the direct heat of the sun.

He sits.

The hunger isn't too bad either, certainly not as much of a distraction as the bruises about his person. Compared to them, the hunger is a minor nuisance. His captors, strangely, seemed to not perceive that he was coming along willingly, and so proceeded as they would have, had he offered a fight. Because of this he deemed it unnecessary, when they caged him, to point out to them that provided their wish was to contain him even should he decide to leave, the frail structure of the cage is inadequate so as to be bordering on the ridiculous. Besides, what does it matter? He is not going to be leaving anyway.

Some of the local humans come by every so often for a while, a few of them carrying sticks. They are suffering from the delusion that he gives good sport. They leave him alone in the end, disappointed.

The hunger, likewise, disappears quickly the moment it realizes it is going to be ignored. After it comes the light, sharp state of mind which allows him to explore the world in detail. The cage is no big obstruction; all he has to do is, for instance, to close his eyes and listen hard, taking note of all the many different sound the village emits. It is truly amazing that the people who live here can go about their business, so oblivious to the sheer cacophony that is going on around them at all times.

The nights do not offer respite. The sounds just get a more vague quality, a sense of a whisper, underlying those sounds closer to the surface, such as the owl hooting from the barn across the road from him, the creaking of a privy doors' hinges or the muffled moans of lovers (the latter becomes more and more scarce as the days pass - this, he takes to mean that the darkspawn horde is approaching. Arguments and sobbing increasingly occupy the space where the moans used to be).

The listening keeps him occupied for a certain amount of time. By then, the loudness of the noise starts to be painful, and he withdraws. There are also the bruises, still, some of which have healed, but others of which remain, seemingly not intending to follow suit. He surmises that his body is running out of resources. Hardly surprising.

The remaining bruises are not painful in the strictest sense of the word, rather they advertise their presence as what he would normally term 'a dull ache'. However, the cage does not offer much by way of movement, and the nagging continuity of the sensation makes it steadily more necessary for him to spend some energy on focusing elsewhere.

Another reason he stops listening is the circumstance that somehow, the rattling of the chains in the well nearby is more and more in the forefront of his mind. They give him water every day, but only just enough. A pitcher full. He accepts it, even though he knows it is meant as a cruelty, and will prolong the process.

That is how it must be. In order to do this the proper way, he must have the time to consider properly all the ramifications of being. The way choice and action decides circumstance, the way wave rises and falls so he can once again attune himself to it. The way responsibility works. He knows it becomes lighter with acceptance. This process takes time. Without water, he would have none. Four or five days at the most. Once he is again properly attuned to the wave, he can stop drinking. Until then, the water shall wash him clean inside. However, he cannot claim more than what is needed of this, the most sacred of substances.

The pitcher will do.

The village is changing, he realises after a while. More humans come every day. Haggard, dirty and terrified, they drag themselves along the ground as beaten dogs. He observes them for a couple of days, even listens to their harsh, flittering whispers. The word that seems to be repeated most is 'Ostagar'. Some of the females howl it and tear at their hair. A battle lost, then.

He also realises that the weather must have changed, when sweat drips into his eyes, temporarily obscuring his view. He removes this obstruction of his vision with the back of a hand and realises that the skin in his face is burnt. He is stronger and more resistent to the suns ray than the humans, but there is no trace of shade in the cage and back home in Par Vollen, they have a saying: only mad dogs and Fereldans go out in the mid day sun.

What bothers him more, and this he has to admit to himself, is the way this weather makes it apparent to him that he has had no means of washing the dust off himself since he has been sat here. The dust of the carts going by settles on him. This is, by far, the most difficult of his trials until now, but he accepts it; there is no alternative.

He is also feeling a bit dizzy now, which is why the shrill voice of an angry chantry sister floating across the river annoys him quite a bit. She seems to be arguing with someone over the prices on food. To what end, he wonders. He has only been inside the chantry briefly, when the Holy Mother - that which they seem to have here in stead of the Ariqun - was to decide his fate. He distinctly remembers her disgusted expression as she looked him over. He also remembers the tithes she asked from the refugees coming to get her blessing. Thirty silver. He is not very proficient with the currency here, but compared to the amounts he has heard discussed by the stalls on the marketplace between the common villagers - back when the market of this place was still open - thirty silver coins should be more than adequate to buy the food off this merchant and give it to the fleeing humans, if these clerics are so concerned with this matter.

After the change of weather, the lack of clouds turns the night air crisp and cold. A few cycles of these wild fluctuations of temperature make his throat swell up. He surmises that it is laryngitis. He remembers that he does not have Asala now - he had managed to not think of it, but when a man is approaching the ninth wave, the grandest of waves, it is to be expected that he thinks about his soul. The thought of these things briefly awakes the feeling of terror and panic, but he gnashes his teeth against it. This cowardice is the reason why he is sitting here now. As if a group of human _athlok __bas _could change what is real.

His sword is gone. His _kadaani _are gone, felled by darkspawn. Led there by his choices. This is real.

All of this, he regrets.

As the sun comes up once more, he is calm again.

He is starting to consider whether he's dreamt it all. _Everything_, up until now. After all, reality is a laughably frail concept, one that only man in his vanity believes to have any _weight. __Maaras __Shokra, _there is nothing to struggle against. He feels ready now, to give himself over to the wave. It is enough. He is at peace, even as he knows he is lost. The Wave, that is all there is.

This is why, when he hears a lilting hum approaching, and opens his eyes and sees the human woman there, he has difficulty determining whether he is surprised or not.

He decides that he is. A basra female wearing the garb of a warrior. He'd have forsworn that even his dreaming spirit could make something like that up.

_Hissra_, he thinks at first, and says the words to remind himself of this, but she remains, brows divided by a vertical cleft as she observes him back, seemingly deep in thought, her head slightly cocked to one side. Hissra would have dispersed by now, it would not have withstood those words.

Since this is the case, he takes to observing her back. His estimate is a month. Longer than this, she cannot have been wearing this garb on a daily basis. She is more used to singing than wielding weapons every day.

There are still traces of healing blisters on her hands. Wrapped in strips of cloth and leather, barely coherent remains of a pair of leather gloves. Blood spattered, from Ostagar, the place of the lost battle, the name that the females cry.

A month at the very longest, then.

Behind her stand two companions. A male, blonde, wearing heavier armor than she of the grey eyes, and a female, wearing not much of anything at all, a staff casually leaned upon.

A _sareebas-bas_, he thinks, and it puzzles him. Are they not all in the great towers, like the one he saw in the distance by the lake, just before he and his brothers were attacked? Such was the information, but it is clear to him by now, that much of what has been explained by the Fereldans he has met before coming here has very little to do with how things here _are_, and a lot more with what they _imagine _them to be.

Finally, there is the dog. A stately animal, calmly sat behind the left leg of the grey-eyed female. He knows his place, it seems, which is clearly more than could be said about the entirety of the human company which he keeps.

The other two seem fidgety, as if they, too, are puzzled by this stopping and staring of the female in the warriors garb. He is, in fact, starting to find it rude himself. He is surprised as she walks towards him, sticking her fingers between the bars of the cage, closing her palm around one. A small, white fist, and the vertical fold above her nose grows deeper still.

He asks her to leave him alone. Her grey eyes, intent and staring directly at him, blinking less than that of other humans he has come across, makes him aware of himself again. He would prefer to avoid this.

'What did you do to end up in there?'

'How long have you been locked up?'

'Why?'

She is full of questions, like an _imekari_, and he find himself answering them without being sure why he does so. He suspects, a brief pang of shame in his gut, that it is exactly because of the way she questions. In Par Vollen, it is the ariqun who the small ones question when they seek understanding. This kind of thinking is, of course, presumptious in the extreme, but he puts the thought aside for now. If she is not hissra, and she has arrived now, with the wave, all is in its order. He chooses to speak to her.

She, for her part, continues to listen, which in itself is impressive for a human. Barely once, since he landed on the shores of this Ferelden, has he experienced a listening human. They are all busy talking, polluting the air with meaningless noise.

He tells her why he is here. She suggests that he can find atonement otherwise. 'Atonement', that is the word she uses. He is not sure she quite understands exactly _why_ he chose to remain here in the first place (and like everyone else, she seems oblivious to the fact that the cage is barely an obstruction - though this, he admits, may have changed by now, after the time he has spent here not eating).

_Atonement_, he has observed, is a human word which carries great popularity in their temples - their _Chantry_. He supposes that its meaning is close enough to why he is sitting here, if slightly more crude. A word speaking of the judgment of another rather than discipline of the self. Not so big a difference, however, that it is necessary to correct her.

Then she leaves, and he sits down again. She said she would get him out of there. That jest made him angry, though he took care not to show it.

Half an hour or so gets by (the sense of time has come back to him again. This, too, awakens his irritation. He will have to start over, now).

Then she comes back. He hears her from some way off, the same humming, as if she is singing to herself rather than her companions. It is not an uncomfortable sound.

She has the key. She opens the cage. This, he had not expected. Warden, she calls herself (she also mentions one of their many superfluous human-words for themselves, but Warden seems to be the more important of the two).

The wave has come and gone, then, and not taken him with it this time. He must search for it elsewhere.

No one can remain sitting in a cage, once the door has been opened. It would be ridiculous.

She has his armor with her too. He puts it back on, and tells her that he is Sten of the Beresaad, something which she seems to accept. Then she gives him a sword. A spirit, borrowed from a singing female who believes she is a Grey Warden.  
>It is not his spirit, his Asala, but it will have to do.<p>

The cage has taught him enough to go further. A dream within a dream. This could prove to be one of the more instructive ones.

Then she smiles.

Bird, he thinks. Griffon.

They go.

Behind them, the barred door sings mournfully on its hinges. None of the villagers seem to care enough to go up and close it.


	3. Old Souls I

**Named after 'Old Souls' from the Inception OST.**

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><p>SAITO: 'I have become an old man...'<p>

COBB: '..filled with regret...'

SAITO: '..waiting to die alone.'

- from the motion picture 'Inception'

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><p><em>Captain Marlowe's diary<em>

_Weisshaupt, 9:70 Dragon Age._

_Weather: Cloudy. In fact, whole damn mountain covered in fog. When will it get its act together and actually rain?_

_The Griffon seems to sleep less than anyone else here. The last few months she has taken to stalking the hallways at night, to the terror of the new recruits. Can't say I blame them. Truth be told, even the rest of us who have known her for long are feeling a bit uneasy about it. Vincent, that ol' bugger, merely shrugs and says it's hardly surprising. I asked him if he thinks her Calling is approaching, but he shrugs again and doesn't elaborate._

_Nope, wouldn't be surprised if it's her Calling finally doing her in. Sometimes, I wonder if it hasn't really been going on for seven or eight years, and she's just too stubborn to give in. According to what I've read, the longest a Warden was recorded lasting before going to their Calling is the case of Larius, and he lasted 32 years. The fabled King Alistair went for the Deep Roads 20 years ago, leaving behind, as we all know, a bloody mess because he and Queen Anora never produced an heir. Commander Howe left10 years ago, and I've been told he was the last one of the Blighters, as we used to call them. Except her, of course, our Griffon. Or the Hero of Ferelden as they apparently used to call her, for at least a few years after she slew the Archdemon. She's lasted 40 years so far._

_What the heck. As long as she walks, at least she doesn't sleep. They say that she always dreamt more than everyone else too. I can second that personally. To this day I clearly remember the first week I was here and the echo of the screams down those same hallways at night. Somehow being told that it was just the person who command us all by day didn't help any. It just gave us all the willies. I feared her then - who didn't? We all did, feared her as much as we loved her. I'm older now, and more experienced, harder to scare, but I still respect her. The other day some young prat who hasn't been initiated yet suggested that the old bat is going as crazy as the notorious Commander Dryden. These days, everyone knows the tale of Sophia Dryden._

_We made him cry uncle. Reminded him that if not for the Griffon, he wouldn't even know who Sophia Dryden was. _

_He swallowed his words and has kept his gob shut ever since. He will stick to it if he knows what's good for him._

_They say her hair was dark brown when she was younger. Wish I could've seen it. Her hair is grey these days, as steel. Matches those hawk-eyes of hers. She still doesn't have very many wrinkles. Wonder if it's the Taint that keeps her that well._

_It's not that she is pretty. She isn't really, though she isn't ugly either. The more I think of it, the more that whole thing with the 40 years seems a bit crazy, even though it has to be true - I think we're all pretty sure, both about when the Fifth Blight was, and who ended it. But 40 years... that would make her at least 60 years old. She looks it too, even with the lack of wrinkles. Since I joined the Wardens, her back has started to round, like that of an old granny, and she's limping. But she still wears her armor. And her eyes are all right, that's for sure. She whipped us all into submission in the archery field as late as last week._

_Not to mention her voice. Wonder what it must have been like when she was young. It's dark when she hums along out there in the hallways, dark and gritty. But there is still something terrible about it. I heard she was a bard, and I can believe that. Feels like she could tear down all of Weisshaupt fortress. It's one of the reasons I'd rather have her stalk the hallways than sleep, and dream more dreams._

_She's a hero, our Griffon. No two opinions about that._

_She does say some strange things sometimes. 'When are you people going to start sorting out your own shit?' She sounds real tired when she says that._

_But I guess that's how it is when you are First Warden and always sort of aloof, apart from everyone else. The rest of us, we have lives besides being Wardens. Or try to have, at least, after all a Blight doesn't happen every day, and thank the Maker for that. Some of us have sweethearts, some, like myself, are even married._

_From what I heard, she never did any of that._

_Never. _Ever!

_And I have to be honest and say that I find that kind of obsession with duty a little scary._

_Must be lonely though. Being the last one alive an' all. I saw her once, standing by one of the windows in her office, starin'. I'd been sent up to her on some errand, can't for the life of me recall what it was now. And sure enough there she stood, staring towards the sea. I don't think she'd noticed me coming in. The moment she did, she just asked me the most random question. How far is it to Par Vollen? She asked._

_Weird, eh?_


	4. The Tower

**Usual disclaimers apply. etc.**

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><p><em>You want a revelation<em>

_you want to get it right_

_but it's a conversation_

_I just can't have tonight_

_You want a revelation_

_some kind of resolution_

_tell me what you want me to say?_

Florence + the Machine - 'No Light, No Light'

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><p>She wouldn't do it in front of the others. Never in front of them, that much he has come to understand by now. But he has also observed her enough to recognise the tightening of her shoulders. She did not like what he said about magic, in the tower.<p>

It's only when there are just the two of them left, there on the bank, that the explosion comes.

"What exactly are you trying to accomplish?" She is shaking, her usual cold paleness broken now, cheeks flushed with anger.

He regards her as she immediately picks up the reins again, holding herself hard, though he can tell by her trembling that something in her is chomping down hard on the bit. He would probably have felt disgust at her lack of control when he got here, but that was before he came to the banks of this very lake, and all that lay here. He has become an older man since then. The Wave will sometimes overwhelm. He knows this, now.

She points towards the tower, then.

"In there..." she begins, her voice a low, sharp growl. He waits, patiently. She tries again:

"In there..." and her arm is still shaking, he is beginning to wonder what exactly she means, and whether she is talking to him or to herself.

"In there, people live. PEOPLE. Other living beings. _Do you get it_?"

Yes, he gets it. He also believes he knows what will come next, so he says nothing, just waits for her, watching her struggling with the Wave inside of her. It is uncomfortable, seeing her in such a private moment. He has come to understand that an unclad face is the custom in Ferelden, but not hers, never hers. He is acutely aware that he is staring. He feels indecent, but she started it. He locks his gaze to hers.

"You are questioning my mental faculties, Warden...?"

She is still shaking. There is a trace of wet on her cheek now. He looks away at that. There are times to be daring and times that demand respect. He will not spy on her so utterly naked.

Silence stretches on. Then, suddenly, he hears her exhale, heavily. He risks a glance back at her. The shaking is gone. She has turned away, so all he sees is her shoulders, low and tired. She has witnessed the truth of how her own people responds to magic, and from what he can grasp, it shocked her as much as it did him. Possibly even more.

He realises then, that she may have misunderstood something.

"Lecturing you about the difference between magic and mage is not my role." He clarifies curtly. From what he has seen in that tower, however, such a lecture could be sorely needed.

There is the griffon look again. "I know what you do with your mages," she snaps. "I have not been to Seheron or to Par Vollen, but I can read."

"Then you will know," he explains patiently," that the Sareebas walk amongst us, their chains in plain sight."

He looks towards the tower again. The plume of smoke around its top is drifting away, but a shadow still remains. The air still carries the smell of rotten eggs, even on this side of the lake. He remembers the air inside, thick and heavy with the memory of screams and claustrophobia. In stead of restraining their Sareebas children, they banish them from existence. One single house, for as long as they live. In stead of the safety and companionship of an Arvaraad, they give them prison guards. In stead of the chains, a sign of burden to be respected - invisible ropes, unacknowledged. In stead of that one pain of the sewing of the lips...eternal punishment for every minor transgression. Again and again.

And _they_ call _us_ barbarians.

She cackles then. A joyless sound.

"And you cut out their tongues for fear of a cantrip."

He did not mind her yelling, but this does anger him. "It is not within the scope of Sten's duties to discuss philosophy with you, Warden. Until such a time as you can explain to the Triumvirate how to deal with Tevinter mages who can slay a man in his dreams, or take over his mind, this is how things are." And he gets out the whetstone to sharpen the sword, showing her that this conversation is at an end.

Her smile fades. "It is still wrong, Sten."

She is clearly sad. So is he, but does he throw it in her face? No. One should think she would show the same consideration, but apparently not.

The smell from the tower is still invasive. He spends a final glance on it, then preoccupies himself with the blade.

"Many things in this world are imperfect, kadaan." He says softly. It's probably insufficient, but it is the best he can offer. "Let me know when you manage to correct them all."


	5. Old Souls II

_**Usual disclaimers apply. I'ts been a long hiatus - Life Happened. Also it's the usual problem of having the story in your head and then getting your act together to put it to paper for someone else. Right, onwards. Better late than never.  
><strong>_

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><p>Captain Marlowe's diary, 2:71 Dragon Age.<p>

_Weather: Frosty in the morning but clear. Later, the sun melted it. Spring will soon be upon us._

_It was easy enough to see, during the audience, that the Queen was afraid of our Griffon._

_Standing behind my commander, I had a good look of Her Majesty's face, and because she was so focused on her main guest, my scrutiny wasn't noticed. That is the advantage of being the fly on the wall._

_I have followed the Griffon into audience before, and I always come away with the strangest conversations etched in my memory. _

_Why the Queen is afraid of the Griffon - or, First Warden Cousland, as they address her in court - I have no idea. Sure, she is First Warden, and holds a great deal of power, but in a sense, they are family, and they act towards another as family. King Alistair was a Warden before he became ruler. From what I understand my commander regarded him as her brother, though I know that many of the stories about the two of them will say otherwise to this very day. _

_The audiences always follow a set pattern._

_I remember back when my old gran was still alive; it was the same with her. I would visit her, and it would be the same conversation. Both her complaints, as about the neighbour's son turning bad and the hinges on the privy door going crooked and would I not fix it for her, there's a good lad. But also her joys, such as the memory of the dance at the may bonfires when she met my gramps, and 'I used to be one of the prettiest girls in the village in my day, you know'. She wouldn't seem to remember having said the exact same things to me the week before._

_And she would bring out the same ancient but meticulously clean stoneware mugs, and serve the same dry biscuits with the tea. For me, those biscuits were heaven all the same; they tasted of my childhood, and vague memories of her being younger._

_The Griffon and the Queen too, are both old women now, the only two still remaining from another era. One a venerable widow, the other a spinster, but in many ways they are frighteningly similar_

_This time, true to habit, Her Majesty offered her usual jibes, and true to habit, the Griffon met them with cool disregard. _

_I couldn't help myself this time. So, as we are heading back to the Grey Wardens' Denerim quarters, I ask her what Queen Anora's problem is. _

_"How do you think you would feel," she replies, "if you had twice been forced to marry some man you did not love, simply because being ruled by an unmarried woman is considered an insult by most of Fereldens noblemen?"_

_It always freaks me out how direct she is. The things she says!_

_I'd posit that there were other considerations than Anora being a woman, when that match was made. For one, she wasn't strictly of noble blood._

_Still, it's true; even the Rebel Queen was a widow. Bann Alfstanna was married until the darkspawn widowed her, and from what I heard, Loghain Mac Tir tried to seize her lands after her husband died._

_"Empress Celene had the right idea" the Griffon then adds. "She kept the suitors at bay, while always giving them just enough hope to satisfy their vanity. Not that Her Majesty could get away with doing that. She had to settle for the dubious pleasure of watching Cailan running after Celene, wagging his tail all the way, while she ruled his kingdom for him."_

_Celene was empress of Orlais, as I recall. The only Fereldan woman of power that I know of, who was never married, is, in fact, my commander. _

_Well, and Flemeth of course. But then, we all know what they say about her._

_I think of my wife and find that I have nothing to answer. I hope that my Phoebe doesn't just put up with me to satisfy my vanity. I'd like to think this is not the case at least. I wouldn't run wagging after anyone else than my Phoebe._

_Would I? _

_The answer to that isn't the most comfortable thought I've ever entertained, but unfortunately this is probably due to it being too true._

_I think of the stories of the Griffon and King Alistair then. Those stories, true or false, must have reached her Majesty's ears too, sooner or later. Small wonder, perhaps, that her tongue is barbed when they speak. All the same, they always manage to get the things done they meet up to do, somehow. This time though, it was different. They just sat there, talking about old times. The Griffon did not tell me why we are here, and somehow I dare not ask. I have my assumptions of course, but it isn't until she sends me out to get a pitcher of wine, and I come back and sees Her Majesty's hand lightly resting on top of my commander's, that I realise. Or at least, I think I do, though of course the moment I come within earshot, the conversation turns to practicalities again. It fills my heart with grief. _

_The Griffon came to Denerim to say goodbye. _

**...**

Hildegard Cousland sees the back of the woman with the steel grey hair in a bun, her outline sharp against the window. The snowcovered mountainslopes outside. The woman is wearing armor, and for some reason, Hildegard wonders who she is. Then, suddenly, the sickly green smoke and the dragon, gleaming bones and eyes like glowing coal. The archdemon, somehow she knows that_ that_ is the archdemon. It covers the mountainside, searching and looking for her, and soon, very soon it will spot them, and its glowing gaze will fall upon her and burn her clean to ashes, even before its breath reaches the window. She wants to disappear. She hears sobbing and knows that it is her own. She is just eight years old. "Mother... _Mother!_"

The old woman turns. A silhouette, face obscured, but the voice, when it speaks, makes her shudder. It sounds old, horribly old and tired. Like the shoulders of this person has carried too much weight for far too long. And yet, while the archdemon bellows to drown out everything else...

_Do not be afraid. There is no struggle. It will be how it will be._

A dream, just a dream. She wakes up to the view of the night sky. The moon is full, impossibly big, the clouds are few. Everything has the slightest tinge of violet in it.

"Marlowe!"

Who in the void, she wonders, is Marlowe, and why did I say that?

"Are you allright?!"

She sits up, feeling woozy, waking up. Alistair sounds distraught. She wonders if he is really talking to her, or more to himself. From the sound of his voice, he is the one more in need of reassurance.

She thinks of Fergus, then decides not to. What good will that do?

"Yes. I think so."


End file.
